


Birch Tree

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 09:37:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12885114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: The first time you see him he’s just a boy but so are you.





	Birch Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL I LOV U 5EVER

The first time you see him he’s just a boy but so are you. Memories never work the way you think they should- every time you remember Gary’s face from back then, so young, angled in stubborn and uncertain ways, you’re really thinking of it from the perspective of you now. 

You don’t really remember what boy-you thinks of boy-Gary, which makes you feel funny, a weird tightening of the stomach that feels like being tickled but also feels like you’re going to throw up. You vaguely remember that you read somewhere, or maybe someone told you, Victoria perhaps, she had a weird fact phase, that the cells in your body change completely every 7 years. You wonder if this was true, or maybe just some misremembered piece of pseudo-scientific fact that stuck in your brain. Seven years- nothing of you is left from the first time you saw his face.

But there’s that recurring image, still. You can see it when you close your eyes. Gary’s face, aged 17, filled with 17 year old hatred and fidgetiness and ardor. You can no longer tell if it’s memory or something you conjured out of a hundred photographs. You’ve always been good at remembering things, always good at facts and figures though you’re never comfortable enough in front of people to reveal it. Victoria says you should stop telling people you’re stupid before they even get to know that it wasn’t true. You kiss her, but inside you think it really just saves everyone time. 

 

Anyway- you think about more than Gary’s face. For one thing, it hurts to recall. His eyes always seem to carry some reproach, bewildering because it’s years before you hurt him, so what does that make it? predetermined reproach? Perhaps Gary always knew what would happen, even before you made the decision and wrote your name on the dotted line, under Real Madrid, so hard it scratched through the paper the first time and they had to find you another copy. Maybe all those years beside you he’d been thinking it so hard it had drifted through the space between the two of you and latched inside your brain. 

 

Of course, you can blame him for it. You can hide. You can’t love him, but you do that too. You’ve never been one to abide by rules. “Don’t”, he says, not begging except maybe with his eyes, but he can’t look at you so you will never know. “Becks. Don’t go.” 

But you do go, you’ve signed your name and you’ve emptied out your locker and you’ve ordered everything in your bathroom twice, even Victoria’s numerous brands of hair product, by size and color. You wash the dishes even though they’re already clean to stop yourself from doing it a third time. 

 

 

 

 

What can you do, except go? 

 

 

 

 

So you board the plane. You don’t watch United anymore, nothing you can justify to yourself though not for lack of trying. It’s warm all the time. You want to turn the TV to the right channel, just once, just so you can see him running with his sharp elbows and maybe a flash of the arch of his back during throw ins, but you can’t. You call him because this way you can’t see his face, can only imagine reproach that he never shows. _Gaz_ , you say, and imagines the telephone lines transporting the single syllable a thousand miles over land and under sea to his ear. 

 

He sighs, always, after you say his name, like he couldn’t help it. This is the only indication you ever get, the only reproach he voices, the only answer to the question you could never ask. 

 

You can’t watch United but you can dream about them. If his heart was a color it would be obvious, United Red and glowing unhindered in the darkest places. Your heart, on the other hand- you’re not sure. It didn’t seem like something you could know about yourself, like a forbidden truth. You wanted to ask him, but you’re afraid. Instead you dream about playing for United, the color of your heart safely hidden under the crest and the jersey, nothing except distance in your way and the distinctive, swift arc of a ball headed to the back of the net. 

After that, of course, there’s Gary’s arms around you, like a reward no one else knows you get. 

 

Once you start dreaming it becomes hard to stop. Before you know it you’re three times removed from the first time you saw Gary’s face- brand new cells, a brand new man every time- oddly like putting on a new jersey. Real, Galaxy, Milan, Paris, it comes and it goes and you can’t ever imagining things staying still, unchanging. You think it might drive you a bit crazy, sort of like how if you stared at something long enough the lines start wavering and bright spots appeared. 

 

You meet Gary for lunch one day, in Manchester, unsurprising. He says, casually, over mashed potatoes, “Becks. Did you know the whole thing with cells in the human body changing every ten years is bollocks?” 

It makes you put your fork down. You’ve always known it’s a stupid fact and yet- 

“Why?” 

“Neurons in the cerebral cortex are never replaced,” Gary says, reading off some news site. He’s glancing at his phone so you still can’t see his eyes. Somehow- somehow you manage to pick up your knife and fork again, even though the steak tastes like rubber. Even though there’s something burning at the edges of your eyes. You fold your napkin precisely into triangles.  

 

Years after that, you close your eyes and try to recall Gary’s face again, because you haven’t seen him for almost half a year and you missed him. This time you get a memory, just a hazy and indistinguishable flash with no details to root it down to anything. You think it must be after training- you think you must have been playing somewhere abroad, because you were sharing rooms with Gary. Somehow you sat on his bed to watch TV, and he fell asleep, and you fell asleep beside him. 

You remember, so clearly it felt sharp, not in the way a knife is sharp but like the smell you get after you dig a nail into an orange and first peel it open, that you woke up in the morning, and Gary’s hand was curled into you shirt. 

You don’t even remember what he looked like then, asleep. Just his hand, and a memory of his warmth. 

 

And it hurts you, this, still. Makes you want to turn back time and memory and fix things, anything, a bad match, a rainy day, a contract you shouldn’t have signed- 

But you couldn’t. You phone him up, instead, and when he says “Becks?” voice hoarse and sleepy, you tell him. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from the foals song bc it always remind me of becks...  
> @rach u deserve so much better but #itried ;------; kees 
> 
> embarrassing statement of friendship: ever since i read rachel's beville i have known no peace. the following day, mancs started manifesting in my house physically.  
> ...then i read the rest of her fics n creeped on her blog till we became friends. FORREAL i always look forward to anything you write and ALSO your snapchats n i lov u !!! a lot and hope u hav the best birfdee ever <3


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